Remove Noble: Segregation is not leadership
Public education should bring people together, not tear them apart. As an Antrim resident, I am appalled by Rep. Kristin Noble’s recent advocacy for “segregation” in New Hampshire schools. Whether she frames this as “political” or “racial,” the sentiment is the same: a desire to silo our children into ideological camps. To use the term segregation so casually ignores the generations of trauma and the long struggle to ensure every child has an equal seat at the table. A leader suggesting that school “scores” would improve if we had separate schools for “them” and “us” reveals a vision of education that is exclusionary and dangerous.
Our Monadnock region schools succeed when they are places where children from all backgrounds learn to navigate a pluralistic society together. A chair of the House Education Committee who views the student body through a lens of “us versus them” is fundamentally unfit for the role. Her responsibility is to oversee policies for all children, not to facilitate their division.
Rep. Noble’s defense — that she was simply describing a trend of “self-segregation” — is a hollow excuse. Real leadership requires resisting our worst impulses toward division, not codifying them into state policy. If we allow our education system to be guided by someone who views segregation as a “win-win,” we signal to our children that we have given up on the idea of a unified community.
I am calling on Speaker of the House Sherman Packard to remove Rep. Noble as chair of the Education Committee immediately. Our students deserve a leader who believes in the dignity of every individual and understands that we are stronger together, not apart.